It's going to be hard to keep track of all the times Team Spanos gets punked by the national media in any given week, so let's put together a rolling mega-thread where you can dump off your favorite articles from the national media that rip this franchise and their AWESOME ownership family.

This way, we can keep our own Organization Hate thread for our own insights on the team, and use this one for when the rest of world notices how awful the Spanos clan really is.

How many ways can a sports franchise be embarrassed in one day. I'm not sure, but the Los Angeles Chargers damn sure tried to answer that question on Sunday. One after the other, embarrassments kept coming for Dean Spanos and his relocated franchise in their first home game in Los Angeles.

First, there was the billboard. As you may have heard, angry San Diegan and former Chargers fan Joseph MacRae raised enough money to put up a billboard just down the road from the team's new home at StubHub Center. So fans attending the game and passing that sign saw one of the five following images ripping Spanos and the NFL rotated throughout the day:

When I asked MacRae what inspired him to raise the money, he had the following to say:

"After hearing John (Spanos) talking sh*t (about San Diego) and having to deal with this whole relocation experience for the past three years got to me. The fact that the NFL sent Dean (Spanos) back to San Diego with an extra $100 million to get a deal done actually gave me hope.

"I really did this though because I know for a fact that Prop C was just smoke and mirrors for them to use an excuse to leave to LA. They knew easily about three/four years ago that they were leaving. Prop C only allowed 345 k people to vote on it while 3.3 million people live in SD. The most die hard Chargers fans come from southeast and north county. Places like Chula Vista, National City, Poway, Fallbrook and Oceanside didn't get a chance to vote.

"If Dean had a (soul) he would have never left."

As a San Diego resident, I'd bet a vast majority of San Diego residents agree with everything MacRae said.

Yes, that's the bio for Michael A. Spanos, Dean's brother. Someone clearly forgot to update it from last season.

How about the crowd? The StubHub Center holds 27,000. The Chargers failed to sell the game out, as the announced attendance was 25,381, which is the number of tickets "distributed" not the number of people through the turnstiles. The crowd shots from the game were embarrassing:https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DJ85QzwUIAE0rEF.jpg

...

As if those indignities weren't enough, after the game, veteran Los Angeles sports columnist Bill Plaschkepenned a piece with the following title: "Chargers still don't belong in LA."

The key paragraph of the piece for me was this:

The Dolphins won the game 19-17 while the Chargers suffered yet another loss in a string of organizational defeats that has followed them since they made the unpopular decision eight months ago to leave their loyal San Diego fans and move to a town that neither wanted nor needed them.

Bill Plaschke and I agree on something. Man, Dean Spanos truly has a gift for uniting people in opposition to him.

The Chargers don't belong in Los Angeles. They are an embarrassment to the NFL and these issues will continue to pop up every week. It's a joke and the rest of the league is starting to catch on to what we've known for months. Moving a second NFL franchise to Los Angeles was a horrible decision.

DaronEdwards

09-18-2017 12:48 PM

Re: Rolling Mega-Thread of Spanos Getting Punked By The Media

USA Today: Chargers and Rams COMBINED for only 71,000 attendance on Sunday. NFL claims this is 'not a problem.'

...
The Chargers failed to sell out their 27,000-seat StubHub Center. Across town, the Rams didnít fare much better. Official attendance at the Coliseum was 56,612. Worst of all: the teams combined to attract fewer fans than USC did the night before for its Coliseum showdown with Texas (84,714).

For 20 years, the city of Los Angeles didnít have an NFL team. And for 20 years, it seemed that L.A. was doing all right as a sports city. But during those 20 years, L.A. became the go-to city for NFL owners to tease about moving so they could get hundreds of millions in taxpayer money to build new stadiums and increase their net worth without taking on the financial risk.

And then in 2015, a team decided to actually move to L.A.: Stan Kroenkeís Rams. The Rams had only been in St. Louis since 1995, and they played in LA before that, so you could argue that the Rams were ďcoming home.Ē But letís face it, Kroenke would have moved the team to Fairbanks, Alaska if they gave him a bunch of tax breaks to build a new stadium.

Okay, with everything going on in L.A., maybe one NFL team wonít be so bad. But Chargers owner Dean Spanos saw the new stadium being built in Inglewood and attached the Chargers to the Ramsí plans, and now weíre seeing two NFL teams in the same city. And while the Inglewood stadium is being built, the Rams have to play at the LA Coliseum, and the Chargers have to play in StubHub Center, the 27,000 seat home of MLSí Los Angeles Galaxy.

The attendance for the Rams and Chargers have been pathetic for the first couple weeks.

I thought the NFL was the most popular sport in the country but the Chargers canít even sell out a 27,000-seat stadium. Take a glimpse at a sampling of non-NFL sporting events that had more people than the 25,381 people who attended the Dolphins-Chargers game.

ēWhile not a sell out, Atlanta United broke the MLS single game attendance record with 70,425 people against Orlando City at Mercedes-Benz Stadium on Saturday.

ēFC Cincinnati, who play in USL (US Soccerís second division), drew a paid attendance of 30,417 people Saturday, a USL regular season record.
ēThe Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim drew 36,709 people when they played the Texas Rangers in Anaheim on Thursday.

ēAdd the Ramsí attendance of 56,612 at the LA Coliseum with the 25,381 from the Chargers game, and the Texas-USC game had more people (84,714). You could even include the people from the Rams and the Chargers, put them in the Coliseum and youíll still have about 5,000 empty seats.

Now, itís unfair to compare NFL attendance to MLB and MLS figures. I mean, NFL tickets cost more, and itís not that people arenít interested, itís that tickets are too expensive. Well, if you go to StubHub, the current cheapest ticket at the LA Coliseum for the Rams is $24 against the Texans in November. And if you wait long enough, you can probably get tickets for next to nothing because people are so desperate to offload their tickets. Prices were as low as $6 when the Rams took on the Colts in Week 1.

Chargers tickets are more expensive, and that makes sense given there are only 27,000 seats in their stadiumóprices will remain high due to the exclusivity of tickets. Having said that, the Chargers still cannot sell out StubHub Center, even with it only being a 27,000-seat stadium. So demand still isnít as high as people believe it to be.

So exactly how does this inspire confidence that anything will change when the new stadium is built in 2020? Sure, people will check it out once or twice because itís new and people are curious, but we all know anyone who isnít insanely rich is going to be priced out of going to any NFL game. People donít even want to go to a Rams game now when tickets are $6, why would they want to go to a Rams game when it might cost $600?

You canít even say people arenít showing up because both teams are terrible. Yes, both LA teams are terrible but if you look at the NYC market, they are sustaining two teams and have been for decades. The Giants have at least won a couple Super Bowls in recent years, but the Jets have consistently sucked and probably will suck for at least the foreseeable future, and they got 78,160 people for a 6-6 Colts vs. 3-9 Jets game at MetLife Stadium last year.

How long does it take until the NFL realizes that maybe they love Los Angeles way more than Los Angeles loves them? Will they ever? L.A. is a lot of things, and it is a great city, but it isnít an NFL city. Maybe L.A. could have sustained one team, but two teams seems like an impossible task. Iím sure the Inglewood stadium is going to be state-of-the-art and that it will host some of the greatest sporting events in the world, including Super Bowls, the Olympics, the World Cup, etc. But its primary tenant will be the Rams and the Chargers and if the NFL is privately aware LA cannot sustain two teams, itís too late to change plans now. That means the NFL, the Rams and the Chargers will just have to hope for the best.

Waterston Fan

09-18-2017 02:27 PM

Re: Rolling Mega-Thread of Spanos Getting Punked By The Media

Do you think the situation would be better if the Raiders were in LA instead?